The microelectronics industry is continually striving to produce ever faster and smaller microelectronic devices for use in various electronic products, including, but not limited to, computer server products and portable products, such as laptop/netbook computers, electronic tablets, smart phones, digital cameras, and the like. This has prompted the investigation of the use of a variety of materials to form such microelectronic devices to achieve these goals. One class of materials that may have promise for use as a channel material is functional metal oxides, as such materials may undergo bi-stable (non-volatile) or mono-stable (volatile) insulator-metal phase transition at low voltage. However, such functional metal oxides cannot be formed directly on common microelectronic substrates, such as silicon substrate, and require exotic substrates, such as titanium dioxide and sapphire for their formation. Thus, as functional metal oxides are incompatible with common microelectronic substrates, they cannot be incorporated effectively into very large scale integration (VLSI) manufacturing. Furthermore, liquid electrolytes are required between such metal oxides and electrodes in the microelectronic device, as there are no device quality high-k/metal electrode stacks currently available to induce an insulator-metal phase transition. Therefore, there is a need for processes and structures for the incorporation of functional metal oxides on common microelectronic substrates, such as silicon substrates, for use in microelectronic devices.